“The plot of the [red carpet] is always the same. People get out of a car. They stop and take pictures. They go inside. The question is: How do you make the wheel a little bit different?”

So say Joan and Melissa Rivers, the inimitable mother-daughter duo who were hired by E! in the 90s to snarkily size up the red-carpet styles of Hollywood’s most imposing movie stars. Their spontaneity and deliciously catty catwalk digs revolutionized the carpet into its own interactive programming genre, which, this year, commanded 10 straight hours of live Oscar-day coverage on E!, and, for some, is anticipated more than the awards ceremonies that follow.

But in recent years, the red carpet has lost its spark, evolving into a parade of similarly-styled starlets pre-programmed to rattle off the name of the designer behind their ensembles. In our stroll down the red carpet’s gleaming history, Joan and Melissa join others in wondering where and when exactly the carpet became, to quote Women’s Wear Daily executive editor Bridget Foley, so “dishwater dull.”

The Golden Era of the Red Carpet

Late Hollywood showman Sid Grauman may have created the town’s red-carpet tradition, by splashing out a crimson-colored walkway in front of his Egyptian Theatre for the first-ever Hollywood premiere, Robin Hood starring Douglas Fairbanks, in 1922. But the idea of a red carpet stretches all the way back to 458 B.C. and the Aeschylus play Agamemnon, which depicts a Trojan War hero who returns home to find a crimson carpet rolled out for him by his wife. The protagonist balks at the prospect of “trampl[ing] upon these tinted splendors” because he—“a man, a mortal”—does not believe himself worthy of strolling the gods’ walkway. (The Kardashians might take a cue from such modesty.)

Given the red carpet’s ancient roots, miles and millenniums from Hollywood, it is impressive, but not altogether surprising, that the town’s professional scene-stealers have hijacked the carpet’s historical connotations and outshone its other occupants (royalty, presidents, and dignitaries among them) to ensure that the world’s most prestigious floor covering is first associated with Hollywood glamour.

In the golden age of Hollywood, the red carpet was one of the few places where its motion-picture stars—Joan Crawford and Jean Harlow in their full-length fur, Clark Gable escorting Carole Lombard, the lankily handsome Jimmy Stewart, and a waist-cinched Grace Kelly—could be seen and sought out for autographs beyond studio walls. Without paparazzi, tabloids, or the Internet (and the lowbrow wannabes this holy trinity brings) the red carpet was an exclusive, far-away place where the world’s most charismatic movie stars were seen. Alas, the actual pigment of the carpet did not matter much to far-away fans since color film and photography were not in common use yet.

In fact, decades later, when the red carpet was first introduced at the Academy Awards, in 1961, the rug’s redness was still not discernable to at-home viewers of the black-and-white broadcast. A representative at the Academy’s library claims that event organizers didn’t install the ruby runner for Grauman-esque flair but as a practical way of guiding the year’s bold-faced nominees such as Elizabeth Taylor, Burt Lancaster, and Janet Leigh from their cars to the ceremony door at the event’s new venue, the Santa Monica Civic Auditorium. (Previously, nominees simply needed to exit their cars, hop across the Hollywood Boulevard sidewalk, and into the Pantages Theater, where the Oscars were held the prior decade.)

The 1964 Oscars broadcast seemed to forecast how significant the pre-ceremony starlet parade would become. That year, Academy producers opted to begin the broadcast (which was still aired in black and white) with more than a quick exterior shot of nominees filtering into the auditorium. During the opening narration, longtime Oscars emcee Army Archerd alerts at-home viewers, “Much of the excitement of every Academy Award presentation is generated by the prominent arriving guests,” before announcing some of the stars as they spill out of their shiny black Cadillacs—“Steve McQueen . . . the lovely Julie Andrews . . . Mr. Bobby Darin, and his pretty bride, Sandra Dee . . .”

At this point, and for the 30 years following, there was little to no red-carpet interaction between the stars and the reporters who were there to chronicle their evening. But producers seemed to pick up on the red carpet’s potential for programming appeal, even planting Rock Hudson outside to gallantly greet at-home audiences. “If you don’t mind being jostled, I’ll take you inside and get you seated,” the handsome white-tied star tells the camera before leading it (and his vicarious at-home dates) down the burgundy runner and into the venue in time for the orchestra overture. This crackling black-and-white clip exhibits so much gentility that if you were to smash cut to last year’s red-carpet melee, with cable reporters thrusting mikes in the faces of flustered movie stars, and shrieking questions about their undergarments, you would suffer etiquette whiplash.

The Moment it Changed

The plot of the red carpet has been the same since Douglas Fairbanks walked Hollywood’s first crimson plank 92 years ago. The question has always been, to paraphrase Melissa Rivers, how do you make each carpet a little bit different?

The answer, for actors in the 70s, “Express Yourself” 80s, and the early 90s: by following Barbra Streisand’s suit—specifically, her sequined, see-through Scaasi pantsuit in which she accepted her 1969 Oscar for Funny Girl. After that bold podium moment, stars began differentiating their red-carpet looks via their varied fashion senses. The stylish surprises this scenario invited, combined with a surging interest in celebrity culture thanks to the advent of People magazine in 1974, catapulted the carpet into new territory. It was no longer a revered runway for studio-groomed stars, but a place for sartorial whimsy that bred water-cooler conversations.

“Actors [were] more in control of their wardrobes,” Bridget Foley explained to us recently. “Ironically, the result was more diversity because what celebrities wore more accurately reflected their personalities and senses of style than we see today. Someone with a casual sense of style might dress casually; someone who wanted to have fun and/or become a topic of sartorial conversation would dress for the intent—Bette Midler in miles of metallic (as I recall); Cher being glorious Cher; more recently, Bjork in her swan, which I think is the most recent instance of deliberate wackiness.”

In other words—if Mia Farrow felt like wearing a white disco-esque halter gown with silver sequins flaming from the bodice, she did. If Celine Dion wanted to wear a men’s suit backwards, with a fedora, she worked that look. And if Whoopi Goldberg wanted to wear a two-toned lime-and-purple cape to a major awards show where she would be watched by millions, she rocked it.

“Who Are You Wearing?”

By the free-for-all 90s, there had been a few televised attempts to chronicle the increasingly out-there red carpet (like Regis Philbin’s 1979 pre-show, which was only televised in L.A.) but none grabbed hold of the zeitgeist like E!’s awards pre-shows hosted by Joan and Melissa Rivers.

“Melissa knew someone at E!,” Joan explains of how she—Emmy winner, legendary comedian, and fashion novice—came to sizing up stars’ styles in expert capacity on E!. “And they were saying, ‘Who should we put out on the red carpet?’ It is a horrible job and no one was doing it then. And Melissa said, ‘My mother.’” Laughing, Joan adds, “It was a very low time for me [in my career].”

Joan says she hosted the 1994 Golden Globes red carpet for E! alone, and by the time the Oscars rolled around the next year, Melissa joined in to make their coverage a two-woman show. Pretty soon, the duo revolutionized the red carpet from a runway—with little celebrity-reporter interaction—into its own brand of entertainment that, for many, was just as interesting as the awards ceremony that followed.

“Joan and Melissa were the first people who came out and made it more of a true conversation between star and reporter,” E!’s S.V.P. of production, Gary Snegaroff, tells us. “They asked about what [actresses] were wearing because that’s what the magazines would cover after the fact, and turned it into a candid conversation on the carpet where anything could happen.”

“And then one year the Academy Awards decided to put Geena Davis on the red carpet,” Melissa tells us, about the 1999 show, which [bumped Joan and Melissa off the carpet a half hour earlier than usual] (http://articles.baltimoresun.com/1999-03-19/features/9903200406_1_joan-rivers-geena-davis-bette-davis). “And she gave all of these interviews beforehand and a press conference and guaranteed everyone that she would not ask actresses who they are wearing. ‘It is about the actors.’ And then, literally, 10 seconds into her first interview with Helen Hunt, which I still remember, and [Geena] was clearly out of questions, she asked, ‘And . . . who are you wearing?’”

Joan explains that the duo had their reasons for sticking to that simplistic question. “Other reporters always said, ‘I’m not going to ask that. I’m going to ask how [the actors] feel politically!’ But actors don’t want to hear that! They’re nervous. They haven’t eaten for three days. They’re trying to remember who the damn designer [who made their dress] is. Their hair is held together with extensions. You can’t ask them anything difficult!”

“All they want to do is look good in pictures, get inside, and find out if they’ve won,” Melissa adds.

The duo fine-tuned their red-carpet act until one year, as they recall, Denzel Washington confessed to both that he spent his entire limo ride on the way to the Oscars watching the two size up the nominees. Another year, Jim Carrey asked the two to spontaneously re-accessorize him. And at one point, Julia Roberts went up to Joan and cheekily demanded on-camera, “Just tell me to my face. What do you think of the dress?”

The two never held back, and while some have called their criticisms “caustic,” they remember their remarks as being made in good fun. “It was never done to make someone feel uncomfortable,” Joan says.

“Or as a character assassination,” Melissa pipes in.

“Fashion is fun, and that’s the way it should be!” Joan says. “We are our own Barbies.”

The Riverses recall the relaxed atmosphere of the 90s, kooky outfits included, as the peak of the red carpet. In between recollections of Ian McKellen giving Melissa a drag off of his cigarette and Sharon Stone doing a costume change midway down the carpet, Melissa thinks back fondly. “[Remember] Kim Basinger, when she was dating Prince, [and] showed up with the one-armed debacle?”

“Those were the good days!” Joan declares. “Actors actually went to stores to pick out their outfits.”

The designer who helped change that was Giorgio Armani, who had set up his Rodeo Drive store in 1988 and began courting Hollywood actors in the 90s, and outfitting them on their biggest nights. Among those he dressed: Jodie Foster, Michelle Pfeiffer, Julia Roberts, Tom Hanks, Denzel Washington, and Billy Crystal. If you don’t count Hollywood costuming legend Edith Head—who designed Oscar gowns for Grace Kelly, Audrey Hepburn, and Elizabeth Taylor—Armani could be considered, to quote Vogue, “the original red-carpet dresser, styling celebrities for their big night even before the word ‘stylist’ came into popular usage.”

It wasn’t long before other fashion houses followed suit. For most designers, dressing a celebrity on the red carpet was a lucrative trade-off that garnered more publicity for its brand than a magazine ad ever could. But there were a few memorable moments when high-fashion designs didn’t translate for mainstream viewers. And the ensuing criticism only discouraged starlets from taking sartorial risks.

The Moment High Fashion Died on the Red Carpet

Melissa Rivers calls the 90s “a bit of a perfect storm,” thanks to the “group of actresses who were fashionistas and didn’t take it all so seriously. They understood the fun and the glamour of it.” She continues, “I still remember Nicole Kidman showing up in the green Dior [in 1997], and that was the first true couture dress on the red carpet, and you went, ‘Wow.’”

Melissa may have been wowed, but Bridget Foley remembers the dress as a major turning point thanks to Joan’s less flattering response.

Foley stages the scene: “For his couture spring 1997, John Galliano was at the start of his romantic mastery at Dior. His collection was exquisite, with one dress in particular—an exotic but wearable dream: a green silk sheath with chinoiserie embroidery and a border of fur (mink, I think) outlining the side slit. It mesmerized. At the Oscars, there it was on Nicole Kidman, then married to Tom Cruise, the pair winning in the category of Most Beautiful Couple. With her stature and red hair, she looked exquisite. . . . And then Joan Rivers’s voiceover, something to the effect of, “There goes Nicole Kidman in the ugliest green you'll ever see.” (The Los Angeles Timesreported that she said, “What an ugly dress!”)

“I mark that observation as a turning point,” Foley continues, “A sad turning point away from anything remotely fashion-y and interesting toward the melting pot of mundane we see today on the red carpet.”

(In an amusing post script, Joan recalls that years later, Nicole Kidman’s publicist was reluctant to let the actress speak to Joan until she pleaded, “Give her to me for Passover. And you know what, she did.”)

The Advent of the Celebrity Stylist and the Celebrity Ambassador

The Rivers team acknowledges that their unabashed carpet critiques may have driven celebrities to rely on stylists and pushed the red carpet toward the yawn-inducing procession it is today. But if the two have a single red-carpet regret, it’s not related to the controversial fashion feedback they doled out—it’s that they didn’t start an agency to profit off their snarks. “We could have been making 10 percent off what all the stylists are making today,” Melissa half jokes.

“During the 90s, Hollywood and the fashion world began fusing themselves together in an interesting way,” Foley explains. And as celebrities bumped models off of magazine covers, stylists switched their focus to celebrities as well, on- and off-camera. Only, whereas supermodels may have been eager to flaunt the highest-fashion styles, movie stars still had their mainstream audience to appeal to, and critics to appease.

“It is ironic that as fashion has become more and more accessible to the mainstream in every way, the view of fashion at the highest level—at least as represented on the red carpet—had become increasingly narrow and inaccurate,” Foley says. “Actresses want a few things from their red-carpet appearances: [First], no one wants to be trashed, humiliated, torn apart by people cast legitimately or otherwise in an ‘expert’ role. That’s human nature. Actresses are human.”

And second: “A prevailing consideration today is to look skinny. Those two realities have led to the complete domination of a few silhouettes: the strapless mermaid; the waisted ball gown, also usually strapless; other variations on the bustier bodice; the embroidered glitter-on-net body hugger that releases into a skirt with movement. Often worn with 50s/60s-type updos and major jewelry, these [styles] project a weary, retro concept of glamour. And retro glamour is what seems to resonate with the television and online critics and the broader audience.”

Joan and Melissa Rivers, who have retired from reporting on the red carpet (to suss out red-carpet styles the next day on E!’s Fashion Police), recognize the self-defeating quality of their on-air run—their sartorial smackdowns got ratings, but led to stars seeking out stylists and straying from riskier red-carpet ensembles. The duo claim that there are additional factors dimming the red carpet’s excitement factor, like the surging presence of publicists who guide their clients to and from the hordes of reporters now stationed on major awards carpets.

“The publicists realized that they could control everything,” Melissa says of the people who determine which outlets get to talk to their celebrity clients, and the grounds on which a 30-second interview can take place (“Only if you mention his/her new movie,” etc.). “It’s the nature of the business today, with 24-hours news coverage and TMZ and Twitter, everyone is so controlled [by their publicity teams] all the time,” Melissa continues. “That takes the fun out of it. I still think that E! does the best red-carpet coverage of anyone. But there’s no spontaneity, there’s no fun. Now, every third actress is being paid [to wear her dress].”

Foley confirms that this practice of paying for a starlet to wear a dress has been going on for some time now, but says that the pay-to-wear ritual is harder to track these days since it’s not “about the single-event transaction, but the enlisting of celebrity brand ambassadors with long-term contractual commitments”—such as Jennifer Lawrence for Dior, which she wore for her Oscar win.

Another breaking point for Joan, she says, is when the carpet became such a circus—with more publicists, reporters, and stars packed onto it than ever—that she started having to physically grab stars gliding by. “I remember almost pulling Cate Blanchett’s arm out of her socket to talk to her, because BBC had her other arm. The girl almost had two dislocated shoulders. And I just thought, ‘I am standing here, an Emmy winner and a Tony nominee, nearly dislocating someone’s shoulder to ask her, ‘Who are you wearing?’”

And even if she did score an A-lister, the battle for actors is so intense that she couldn’t even focus on the star in front of her. “You could be interviewing Tom Cruise, and he could have just said to you, ‘And then I killed my mother . . . ’ but a producer is telling you that Angelina Jolie is approaching. So you have to say, ‘Well, good luck to you, Tom.’ Push him out. And then, ‘Hello, Angelina!’”

Today’s Red Carpet: Desperately Seeking Spontaneity

Because of the anticipation and viewership that Joan and Melissa built around E!’s red carpet coverage, the channel now views the Oscars red carpet each year as its own “Super Bowl,” Snegaroff tells us, revealing that this past year, between 250 and 300 staffers worked to pull off an exhaustive 10 hours of live carpet coverage (including countdown shows and post-shows). All in, E! calculates that 10.2 million unique viewers tuned in for the marathon, which was emceed, in part, by Joan and Melissa’s more diplomatic successors, Ryan Seacrest and Giuliana Rancic.

E! takes its carpet coverage so seriously, in fact, that it has rolled out two New Age inventions over the past four years to diversify itself from its red-carpet competitors. The first, the GlamCam 360, is a 20-foot-wide ring with 48 cameras suspended in a circle, ready to simultaneously snap photos of any starlet who steps inside—the result, once edited, allows viewers, mere seconds later, to see an actress’s gown from every conceivable angle.

The second is the Mani Cam, a shoebox-style diorama, in which actresses and actors walk their fingernails down a mini-red carpet to show off their manicure. The Mani Cam seems silly in theory, and Snegaroff even concedes that the E! production team introduced it “as a goof at the 2012 Emmys.” But it was so popular with both viewers and stars that E! has continued trotting it out at every award show. And Melissa Rivers brings up a smart point about it: “There is so little individuality left on the red carpet that when E! noticed people were doing different stuff with their nails, they figured out how to highlight their nails.”

Even though E! now has the fluffy fashion-focused technology, a small army of employees to dispatch, and the whole concept of “covering people as they walk into a building” down to a science, Snegaroff admits that its biggest red-carpet moments these days have little to do with the fashion or space-age-style cams. “Last year, the biggest moment for [our coverage], was Jennifer Lawrence not realizing she was on camera [at the Golden Globes] and sneaking up behind Taylor Swift. It was an unplanned moment and that’s what makes it fun, and it’s live.” The clip—of Lawrence pulling a face for the camera before greeting Swift and joking that she wanted to throw the singer down the steps—went viral and inspired countless memes. And E! smartly referenced it at every following awards show, even at one point introducing Lawrence to the cameraman who captured her face so that she could berate him live on air. What garnered buzz was not her gown—the actress looked beautiful, if predictable, in Dior—it was her charming off-the-cuff behavior, proof positive that the red carpet’s days as a fashion talking point are over.

The Individuals Who Still Stand Out

“The truth of the red carpet today is that it is one big P.R. party and the goal is to get noticed,” Joan Rivers says at the end of a long conversation. “How do you do that? By either winning the Academy Award or you look or act so different that people talk about you the next day. That’s who gets on the cover of magazines and that’s who is smart.”

“There are a few people who still stand out,” Melissa adds, “Like Cate Blanchett or Tilda Swinton or Nicole Kidman still. You see them on the red carpet and they are clearly not owned by the stylists or owned by the designers.”

“And who is that crazy one I love so much?” Joan asks Melissa, whirring through her mental rolodex of the starlets she’s playfully dissed over the years, searching for the one that, for better or worse, at least isn’t afraid to still stick to her sense of style.